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19 thoughts on “QUICKSILVER!”

I dunno GF. I know that you, Fintan, and The Winslow Boy love QMS, but i still think i just don’t get them. I get the stuff with Nicky Hopkins, but stuff like this, and other tunes that others have posted, still just don’t take hold. I don’t know why that is.

Amy: the most interesting thing about the Spill for me is the totally divergent tastes we have here, I can’t conceive how you can’t find this piece as wonderful as I do! For me it’s not possible that someone as musically perceptive as you can not see/hear what to me is so obvious, but as someone said last week ‘we’re all different’ and I guess this proves it. Tell me one piece of music that you rate as highly as I rate this and that might be a clue?

um, maybe see the live version of Midnight Rambler in my Stones post? I have the feeling that won’t do it for you though…

I’m totally with you on the classical stuff, coming around to jazz is slow going but bit by bit i’m sort of getting there. Maybe someday i’ll start to get this too. I have tried, but i don’t think that it can be forced…

One piece that i do love very much is Avro Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel – does that help?

No, it’s not just you, amy. I have all the necessary qualifications for loving this but (as I’ve told gf before) I don’t. Too much melodramatic John Cipollina guitar for me, although I quite like the feedback segment (but may because it echoes the Dead’s Anthem Of The Sun, a record made in a similar way the previous year).

gf: did you encounter a lady called Florence Nathan (later Rosie McGee) back in those days? She was part of the Dead/QMS scene and was Phil Lesh’s ‘old lady’ for a while. I’ve just read her ebook, in which she tells of her liaisons and friendships with several Bay Area chaps, including Dan Healy. She seems to have spent a lot of time on acid, dancing with few clothes on, and taking the occasional photograph. Ring a bell?

Amy: I wasn’t thinking, I should have picked up on the Stones connection sooner, I’ll give MR a serious listen.
A first random thought though relates to how the Stones and the Beatles were perceived in the ’60’s, it was sort of Street Fighting men versus A day in the life; fairly rough and ready blues versus much more adventurous and creative music. That’s not mean’t to be a qualitative judgement but rather how each was perceived, at least by me. Quicksilver on this cut is definitely in the Beatles camp. I’ve probably listened to Calvary literally hundreds of times and I never tire of it, just now I listened again and discovered something new, the mood changes several times throughout, new themes are introduced, and the changes all seem to happen at the minute mark if you’re watching the counter, not that that’s at all significant. What is are the changes that it goes through from that quiet tentative start to the four tubular bells and then the gong and then the feedback and then the ‘all hell let loose’, and finally the fade to peace and silence. This was recorded live and there was a huge amount of thought went into the structure and performance of this piece. At one point you hear Gary shout ‘Call it anything you want’, he’s responding to someone in the audience who shouted ‘What sort of music do you call this?’ Gary Duncan wrote it.
I don’t know what you call it but it’s definitely not straight up rock and roll.
I don’t know the significance of the title but the piece has always had a ‘trek up the hill to the crucifixion’ aspect for me, a total non believer. That might all be in my mind.
One more detail; this album was recorded in 1968 by the four members of the group, John, Gary, Greg and David, a guy who had been intermittently involved with the group earlier in the decade, Dino Valenti, was in jail doing time for drugs. When he was released in 1970 he joined the group and became the lead singer. From that point on Quicksilver went downhill, they became the rock and roll backing band for Dino, they never produced another album as inventive and creative as Happy Trails.
I just found the Wiki page devoted to Happy Trails, it’s worth a read regardless of which side you come down on the album, there’s even some who share Amy’s pov.
Plus here’s the original Rolling Stone review by Greil Marcus from ’69.

In 1971 as an 8th grader in Berkeley where my parents were on sabbatical for a year a friend took me to my first real “hippie” concert in Golden Gate Park, an all day affair with all the usual suspects, but I gotta cop that between the 30 or 40 minute version of “Who Do You Love” and John Cippolina (sp?) whipping his hair around while he played I was hooked… But I hear amylee too…

Speaking of Beatles, Stones, and blues – came across this one when doing up my Stones post. One of my favorite tunes on the White Album, John could have been a wicked bluesman. This is from the Stones Rock and Roll Circus – E*** C****** on guitar, Keef on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums.

Midnight Rambler didn’t help, I followed your comment re. Gimme Shelter also, that was better but also didn’t give any clues. If you’d asked me if I liked the Stones I’d probably say ‘not really, though I’ve tried, I have 4 albums’. I consider ‘em an English blues band and I don’t mix ‘em in with my blues records; I don’t like Jagger.
Neither did Arvo Part help, though I’ve liked everything of his that I’ve heard.
Let’s say it just goes to show that you like apples and I like mangos and leave it at that, thanks for playing.
ps; Amy, try this one, it’s the other side of Happy Trails and very different.I think you might like it.

Chris: Never met nor heard of the lady clothed or otherwise, actually I never met any of the female species with QMS except at concerts.

Actually, I rather enjoyed that. Stoned off my box in a club or at a festival, I might properly dig it.

Just been putting the final touches to my 11-song list for tomorrow. One on there (at least) inspired by music you’ve introduced me to, gf – hope you’ll like it! (Actually, you may well already know it like the back of your hand!)

But, but, but, there’s no words on the majority of my collection and even those that have them I can’t understand them whatever the language so I tend to do without em, makes a lot more sense.
If you want words play the other side, that’s got words. Bo Diddley words.

I was just being daft – an awful lot of my listening fare these days is in languages I don’t understand too (though I am still quite attached to a vocal). Perhaps I’ll graduate to instrumental stuff in a few years’ time!